From the Australian Dateline program, an excellent segment on cluster bombs that aired in April this year, with a focus on Lebanon.

Unexploded Israeli-launched bomblets continue to litter the Lebanese countryside and endanger playing children and farming families, responsible for the maiming and killing of dozens of civilians well after a conflict has formally ended.

The campaign to ban these insidious weapons everywhere is a most important and worthwhile one. The program follows the effort to ban these munitions internationally.

We recall that during last year’s abominable summer war, 90% of Israel’s cluster-bombs were launched just in the last 72 hours of the war, when, significantly, a ceasefire was known to be imminent.

That is, quite apart from their obviously immoral use, launching them made absolutely no military-strategic sense for Israel, either. The millions of cluster bombs from Israel are nothing more than a massive war crime. In the second video clip, Shimon Perez says they were a “mistake”.

Yet the Israeli government still refuses to provide international mine clearing teams and the Lebanese government with details of where the cluster bombs were fired, which would facilitate clearing operations.

Video segment intro:

Ten years ago, a committed bunch of international activists received the Nobel Peace Prize for their campaign to have land-mines banned worldwide. As a result of their efforts, close enough to three-quarters of the world has signed up to the ban. Now, these same people have their sights set on cluster bombs. And at the forefront of their effort is an Australian, John Rodsted, who these days pretty much devotes his entire life to ridding the world of these deadly weapons. David Brill recently travelled with Rodsted to southern Lebanon, where people are still dying from the cluster bombs rained down by the Israelis in the last days of that recent war.

Depleted uranium as a direct result of US-UK-Israeli neocon policy is wreaking ruin over Iraq, infecting civilians and especially children and lowering their immunity to other diseases such as the measles, infecting livestock, the air and environment, and the serving soldiers as well.

From the web-video intro:

1,000-2,000 TONS DU Spread Over Iraq’s Cities: The President of the United States, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister of Israel must acknowledge and accept responsibility for the willful use of illegal uranium munitions—their own “dirty bombs”—resulting in adverse health and environmental effects. A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter, exploding on impact into a charring inferno. As tank armour, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. More on DU: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/DU.htm

18 minutes

I happened to bookmark this thoughtful piece by Phil Rockstroh a couple of days ago (see PG Picks). Thanks to Phil sending it, I had the welcome opportunity to re-read it and I’m pleased to feature the full article and not just the link here.

By way of preamble, just in the last few days there have been a number of important articles about the continuing diminution of constitutionally-enshrined rights and the danger of martial law in the United States. Many of you will have seen, for example, Michel Chossudovsky’s piece in the Canadian site Global Research entitled Bush Executive Order: Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement.

In addition to this, see Kurt Nimmo’s Decider Guy Demands Further Erosion of the Fourth, James Bovard’s Martial Law: Waiting for the Clampdown, Dave Lindorff’s The Threat Of Martial Law Is Real, Paul Craig Roberts, My Wake-up Call: Watch For Another 9/11-WMD Experience and Ernest Partridge, A Republic, If We Can Keep It — but a sample of the wake-up call in the last couple of weeks alone.

The dangerous erosion of civil liberties is not of course limited to my dear friends in the States. Here in Australia at Empire’s Edge, and in the UK, draconian new “terror” laws are also being enacted, though the corrosion of constitutional democracy seems most marked in Empire’s Epicentre in the US. Nor is all this intended merely to depress us; rather, we are the informed citizenry upon which a healthy and genuinely functioning democracy depends, and we already have means available for redress and reclamation. The impeachment movement is a start that changes the players, there is more we can each do to better direct the system.

In Fascism Anyone? Lawrence Britt enumerates upon the fourteen common characteristics of fascist regimes (subsequently expanded upon and updated in Heather Wokusch’s Bush and the F-Word in 2006), and their prevalence today, identified as:

Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism; Disdain for the importance of human rights; Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause; The supremacy of the military/avid militarism; Rampant sexism; A controlled mass media; Obsession with national security; Religion and ruling elite tied together; Power of corporations protected; Power of labor suppressed or eliminated; Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts; Obsession with crime and punishment; Rampant cronyism and corruption; and Fraudulent elections.

On the US Constitution: GWB has said that its “just a goddamn piece of paper“ (Nov 2005).

In Friday’s LA Times too, Rosa Brooks recalls Ron Suskind’s oft-quoted passage in his book The One Percent Doctrine on imperial hubris in its presumption of the unilateral construction of reality (see A Really Bad Case of “Reality”; and the ‘aide’ quoted is widely tipped to be Karl Rove):

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.

He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

Phil Rockstroh captures the zeitgeist very well and addresses both the imperial imposition of (its version of) reality and its creeping fascism. He is a contributing editor to Cyrano’s Journal Online and is an auto-didactic poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City.

Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law: Roasting Marshmallows on the American Reichstag Fire to Come

by Phil Rockstroh

In this summer of angst and grim foreboding about what further assaults against common sense and common decency the Bush administration might inflict upon the people of the world, how many times during the day do those of us — still possessed of mind, heart and conscience — take pause, hoping we’ve seen the worst of it, then, fearing we haven’t yet, attempt to push down the dread rising within us, so that we might simply make it through the day and be able to rest at night?

Accordingly, those who have been paying attention are aware that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire’s version of the Reichstag fire.

Moreover, a closer look would reveal that the inner processes by which an individual begins the act of acceptance of authoritarian excess — the mixture of chronic passivity, boredom, low grade anxiety and unfocused rage inherent in the citizens/consumers of the corporate state that primes an individual for fascism — have been in place for quite some time within the psyches of the American populace, both elites and hoi polloi alike. Although, don’t look for torch-lit processions thronging the nation’s streets and boulevards; rather, look for a Nuremberg Rally of couch-bound brownshirts. Instead of ogling the serried ranks of jut-jawed, SS soldiers, a contemporary Leni Riefenstahl would be forced to film chubby clusters of double-chinned consumers, saluting the new order with their TV remotes. In the contemporary United States, the elation induced by the immersion of one’s individual will to the mindless intoxication of the mob might only be possible, if Bush seized dictatorial control of the state while simultaneously sending out to all citizens gift certificates to Ikea. Read the rest of this entry »

Silence is not golden, the adapted adage goes, just yellow: speak up! One is reminded about what Orwell said telling the truth in a time of universal deceit, and this spirit informs the Paul Levy piece presented here. A practitioner of integral psychology, Levy is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, available at his website www.awakeninthedream.com.

Here, I feature an excerpt from one of his most recent articles, Breaking the vow of silence, a characteristically thoughtful scholarly-spiritual analytical amalgam that explores the fertile territory between psychology and politics. The piece begins with and then extrapolates from a perceptive anecdote on the psycho-social roots of our political conundrum in western and particularly Anglophone states, where creeping fascism and fearmongering threaten to become more than passing features of our political climate.

BREAKING THE VOW OF SILENCE

by Paul Levy

Certain events play out in our individual lives that reflect back to us situations that are happening in the collective life of our nation or world. One such event happened many years ago in the very synagogue in which I was Bar-Mitzvahed. In what today seems like a dream, I was with my parents on the holiest night of the entire Jewish year, “Kol Nidre”, the night before “Yom Kippur”, the day of atonement. I probably hadn’t been to a synagogue since my Bar-Mitzvah, which was years before. For the sermon, the rabbi gave an impassioned talk about how everybody hates the Jews, and that we all needed to band together against the world. His words were filled with hatred and venom. He was literally preaching fear and separation. His vision had nothing to do with love and compassion, and was certainly not based in wisdom.

I was outraged by the rabbi’s talk. Much to my dismay, when I expressed my feelings to my parents, they not only felt differently but also were very angry with me for having the nerve to be critical of their rabbi. They felt that I was being dis-respectful and sacrilegious by questioning the wisdom of the rabbi, who was, after all, the leader of their congregation.

A couple of months later, the rabbi got fired. Why? It was because he was consistently giving fear-inducing and hate-filled talks to his congregation. My parents told me about the rabbi being fired, and asked me, totally incredulous “How did you know”? Read the rest of this entry »

A very insightful and well argued piece from Mark Braverman. Braverman is a member of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace and Jewish Voice for Peace. He serves on the Board of ICAHD-USA.

I’ve reproduced this excellent essay from Jewish Conscience in full; bold emphasis is mine.

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

Jewish History, Anti-Semitism, and the Challenge of Zionism

by Mark Braverman, Ph.D.

Prologue: Memory and History

When I was 8 years old my brother and I would occasionally stay at our grandparents’ house in South Philadelphia. South Philly in 1956 was an immigrant enclave – here lived primarily the Jews, the Irish, and the Italians. It was a bustling, colorful, tightly packed community. There were outdoor markets and synagogues and churches in abundance, all built on the models of the Old Country. The neighborhood smelled of cooking and garbage. Homeless cats and dogs owned the maze of alleys that ran behind the densely packed streets of row houses. My brother and I slept in a tiny back room. You could fall out the window and land in the neighbors’ shoebox of a backyard.

One summer night it was noisy. As we prepared for bed, my grandmother in her soft Yiddish accent called our attention to the scene just outside the window that looked out over the alley: “Goyim,” she said, pointing out the window at a small gathering of people talking loudly, laughing, and holding drinks. “They’re shikker,” she told us, and I knew without her saying that this meant that being drunk was their natural state – and that this apparently convivial, noisy, and collective condition was a shameful thing indeed. Continuing her lesson, my grandmother told us the story of the Jew and the Goy who had gone to work for the same boss. Over the years the Jew advanced to foreman, while the Goy remained a laborer. One day the Goy goes up to the Jew and says, Chaim, why is it that we both started here together, and you’re second in command and I’m still hauling bricks? The Jew looks at him, and, saying not a word, takes him to the Goy’s backyard and shows him the garbage can, which is full of empty liquor bottles. That’s the reason, says the Jew. The Goy’s response to this lesson is unknown. Presumably (and undoubtedly in my Grandmother’s mind) in his goyish condition he remained unreformed.

I remember the moment. The experience of shock for an 8 year old is not a well-delineated emotion. It’s a damp, heavy blanket that settles over the heart — the colors of the world and the sharp lines of wonder at everyday experience are dulled, suffocating underneath its weight. I asked no questions in response to what she was telling me. But – I know now — I didn’t buy it.

It is 2006, and I am in a large room in the Carnegie Endowment outside of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. I am attending a panel entitled: Politics and Diplomacy: Next Steps in Arab-Israeli Peacemaking. There are eight men sitting at the front of the room, four Palestinians and four Israelis. A Palestinian speaks first, calling for – in plaintive tones, this is the only word for it – a resumption of negotiations before it is too late. The economic embargo of the newly elected Palestinian government with its Hamas majority has been in effect for five months. “We don’t have much time left!” he tells us. I am almost brought to tears by the sadness of his presentation, and a bit shocked, truth to tell, at his restraint as he describes the utter humiliation and desperation faced by his people.

“I am a member of the Palestinian Authority legislative counsel,” he goes on, “and I haven’t been paid in 4 months. I am one of the privileged, and I don’t know how I’ll make ends meet in the coming year!”

I sense the room darkening — there is a silence. I feel shame, embarrassment, anger.

Then it is the Israeli’s turn to speak. I hold my breath: what will he say? How does he follow this? A journalist for a popular Israeli daily and now ensconced at the Brookings Institution nearby, the Israeli sits back, smiles — and opens with a joke. He is, for all the world, a man delivering an after-dinner speech, interested in providing a measured degree of enlightenment while entertaining us.

Clearly, we are in the presence of the conqueror – the man holding all the cards.

“We’ll talk to them when the violence stops,” he pontificates: it’s the old story. But it isn’t the words, it is the arrogance. No - it isn’t the arrogance, it is the blindness, the sweeping, crushing insensitivity to the emotional tone of the previous speaker.

The Palestinian sitting next to him was invisible — he simply didn’t count. And on it went. The other Palestinian panelists, leaning forward in their chairs, protested weakly that time was running out, pleading for a resumption of negotiations. The Israelis sat back, opining about how the Hamas victory rendered the prospects for negotiations negligible, talking about unilateral actions, i.e. their intention to simply do what they wanted, take what they wanted. Among them was a former Israeli General who, in this context, on this panel – I am not making this up – spoke about the Jews’ Right to the Land. But, again, it wasn’t the words, it wasn’t the policies, shocking as they were – it was the negation, the utter, shocking, arrogant negation of the Other. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Agent 99 for pointing out the updated link, the first location of which had lapsed (also updated on audio page). I’ve taken the opportunity to upload this talk again by Johan Galtung which I attended last year. His hybrid-but-mostly-Norwegian accent may make him sound like Inspector Clousseau as our friend notes, but his reflections are always worthwhile and enriching. (RT 81 m)

Galtung talks about enacting a positive peace through meaningful dialogue, about spiritual syncretism and an alliance of civilisations, with reference to the Danish cartoon controversy and other topical conflicts. This elder spokesman and founder of peace studies delivered this address at the Brisbane Festival of Ideas on the 31 March 2006.

Original .mp3 url

Relevant links:

• TRANSCEND Peace and Development Network
• International Peace Research Institute
• Wiki entry Johan Galtung
  

Further links: Conflict transformation

• Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation
• Beyond Intractability
• Conflict Resolution Information
• Peace Library Sri Linka and conflict related
• Transnational Perspectives

Another dispatch of humorous truths from political humorist Steve Bhaerman, aka Swami Beyondananda, who starts by asking why CNN International and CNN America are so different.

• Swami’s OmPage; Related posts

The Tower of Babble

Having spent two weeks in Europe now with four more weeks to go, I see many contrasts between here and the U.S.A. As we flew into Frankfurt, then Paris and then Vienna we saw green fields and thick forests right up to the outskirts of the city. On a bus ride through Slovenia on the way from Croatia to Italy, we saw vast expanses of land not “for” anything, but just “there.”

In Vienna, everyone takes public transit, not just the poor folks with no alternative. As one our new friends told us, “I have the luxury of not owning an automobile.” There seems to be little of the age segregation that we find in the States. Old people hobble along through the streets where they might well have spent their youth. In Venice, even dogs have a particular European “attitude.” On leashes or walking free, they make their way through the narrow streets going about their business, unmindful of the crowds and seeming to crave no attention.

But perhaps the biggest contrast — and the one most relevant to the challenges we face in America — is the news. CNN Worldwide and CNN America broadcast two different stories. While America is fed “babblum” about the latest narcissistic misadventures of Paris Hilton, the same CNN shows Europeans the demonstrations at the G8 meetings. While the U.S. media prattles about which of the Presidential candidates is doing a better job manipulating public opinion, CNN World is doing features about peak oil and climate change. The American media shows talking heads rationalizing the latest surge in Iraq. CNN World shows dead Iraqi civilians.

First question: Are you outraged by this? Second question: If not, why not?

My sad conclusion is this: The one major difference between Soviet Russia and America today is Russian citizens knew Pravda was lying to them. The free press our Founding Fathers fought for as necessary for an informed citizenry has been replaced with a Tower of Babble.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Dutch UN observer in 1966-67, Jan Muhren, describes how he witnessed how Israel provoked their Arab neighbours in the run-up to the Six-Day War on Dutch Nova TV (clips below). The former UN observer in Gaza and the West Bank has said Israel was not under siege by Arab countries preceding the Six-Day War, and that Israel provoked most border incidents, which Muhren surmises was part of its strategy to annex more land.

As the second clip shows, Moshe Dayan admitted as much to Israeli journalist Rami Tal, in an interview only released after Dayan’s death. Dayan corroborates Muhren’s eyewitness accounts that over 80% of the border incidents were Israeli provocations.

This is an important historical corrective to one of the widely propagated founding myths of the state of Israel and its continued justifications for military occupation and regional belligerency. It puts paid to the canard of an ‘existential threat’ that the Israeli political establishment continues to claim — rather, right from the start, the reverse has been true.

** See also Robert Fisk on 1967: ‘Lies and outrages … would you believe it?‘ and Antonia Zerbisias, Viewers get whitewashed version of history

Part 1 (6:15)

Part 2 (6:20)

Social Bookmarks:

Iraqi Artist: Abdul Ameer Alwan (born Baghdad, 1955)

We are rallying for peace, justice and reconciliation, for dignity and the right of Palestinians to live peacefully on their land. We are rallying against the brutal occupation and apartheid laws and practices. Israel must reconcile itself to peace and to the region if it is to finally attain legitimacy and acceptance in the world community, and security for itself.

We are rallying because, allegorically, we are all Palestinians.

We are rallying because we ask not for whom the bell tolls (Donne), because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (King).

We are rallying to end the Occupation in its engine-room, the Israeli-occupied territory of Washington DC that allows the Likudnik neocons to invade and pillage any country they choose to bully, threatening human life, peaceful co-existence and common dignity everywhere. We rally in many cities but perhaps Washington is the most important in this respect.

We are rallying for Palestine, for Iraq, for Afghanistan, for Lebanon, for Somalia, for all populations that have suffered from being theatres of war, or threatened with the prospect.

We are rallying because, to update the great words of Pastor Martin Niemöller for the new millennium:

First they came for the immigrants,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t an immigrant.
Then they came for the Palestinians,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Palestinian.
Then they came for the Muslims,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Muslim.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was not a union member.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

We are rallying to reclaim our agency and because another world is possible achievable.

Pertinent links (just from the last day or two):

• • JUST ADDED: Ali Abunimah, Its not just the occupation (see article after the ‘More’ break)
  • Dutch videos, The Six-Day War Deceptions Part One; Part Two
  • Jeffrey St. Clair, Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited
  • Al Haq Report, Wilful Killing of 72-Year-Old Civilian by Israeli Forces in Hebron
  • Ilene R. Prusher, Israelis protest to mark Six-Day War
  • Dr Gideon Polya, Apartheid Israel’s 40th Anniversary
  • Al Jazeera + Agencies, Israeli troops shoot Hebron family
  • AFP, Israelis expand West Bank settlements
  • Jonathan Cook, Defending Israel from democracy: The Shin Bet and the persecution of Azmi Bishara
  • Sharmila Devi and Harvey Morris, New UN map charts West Bank reality
  • ICAHD-USA, Constructing Peace Campaign
  • Chris Hedges, Israel’s 40 Years of Occupation: From Democratic State to Violent Oppressor
• Boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign—-boycott Israeli products:

Social Bookmarks:

Read the rest of this entry »

Cartoon by Leba-none

First, sarcastic humour alert. You may know that the supremely representative UN Security Council has voted to go ahead with a spurious court to prosecute the murder two years ago of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri (a.k.a. Let’s Pin the Blame on Syria—one must question why the murder of Hariri merits an international tribunal but the war launched by Israel against Lebanon last year does not, nor the other well known cases of “targeted assassinations” by the US or Israel).

Ten council members voted for the US, France and UK sponsored U.N. resolution that would unilaterally establish a tribunal to investigate the 2005 Hariri murder.

Five countries abstained: Russia, China, Indonesia, Qatar, and South Africa, who argued that the council was exceeding its authority and interfering in Lebanese affairs (PM Foaud Siniora wants the Tribunal but Lebanon’s Parliament had not approved it).

This tongue-in-cheek commentary about the Tribunal is courtesy As’ad Abu Khalil of the Angry Arab News Service (see yet another instance of the sarcastic humour here, in two short lines: KAPOW! At least we Lebanese can laugh at ourselves).

Exhibit # One

It was ironic to watch the quasi-debate at the United Nations Security Council today. Was it amusing to watch the delegate of South Africa defend the Lebanese constitution and sovereignty while the Lebanese delegate was pleading for the UN to violate the sovereignty of Lebanon? Lebanon today has the equivalent of Babrak Karmal government.

Exhibit # Two:

The UNSC council has just passed a resolution to establish an international tribunal to find and punish the killers of Rafiq Hariri.

As is well-known, this tribunal will

1.) end all manners of Syrian intervention in Lebanon;

2.) finally produce a sovereign and free Lebanon;

3.) force the Lebanese to love one another;

4.) will also produce unprecedented prosperity for all the Lebanese;

5.) will address the underlying causes of all conflicts in Lebanon;

6.) will undermine sectarianism in society and in the Lebanese political system;

7.) will end the massive corruption that plagues the Lebanese administration;

8.) will ensure that all Lebanese groups and militias are disarmed;

9.) will defeat the Iranian plot in the region.

However, the tribunal, as is well-known, will not find nor will it punish the killers of Rafiq Hariri although the UN investigative team is examining soil samples in Saudi Arabia. Stay tuned.

On a more serious and less superficial note, AbuKhalil hypothesises that the Hariri-Bandar-Bush (Bush being shorthand for Cheney, Abrams and the US neocons) plans spearhead a shift in the power game dynamic, particularly in attitudes toward Iran. The twists and turns that are being played out are certainly confusing seasoned observers and neophytes alike. AbuKhalil draws upon AUB academic